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If you’re anything like what I used to be, Academic probation became a frightening reality sometime during Sophomore year, you realized it took little to pass your classes, and when you started a part-time/full-time job outside of school, you started on the bare minimum. When you got home, you were too tired, to even focus long enough to make more than 6 flashcards for your foreign language class, let alone study or write an essay for your super-difficult humanities class that you signed up for on a whim.

If you’re anything like I was, you started working around 50 hours a week suddenly at your job, and had signed up for 18+ credit hours… and realized after the last drop date how screwed you were.

So you had to make a few sacrifices so you could pass some classes. Maybe you sacrificed your math class in favor for your foreign language class, or your bio class in favor of your English class… you stopped going, knowing that if you tried to pass them all, you’d end up failing them all, considering how hard you were working on things.

Maybe you had that existential crisis in the middle of the semester that made you feel like there was no point in going to college because you don’t know what your purpose (if such a thing exists) in life is, and college doesn’t seem to be helping you narrow it down.

If you had your first existential crisis this semester, this is probably how it made you feel.

Also, your buddy whose been working all the time you’ve been in college was just made manager and they’re making $15/hr already, and that’s how much your starting wage will be if you successfully finish your degree in the 1-3 years you have left and you’re wondering if it’s worth it.

The euphoria of learning new concepts that stretch your thinking, and makes it seem as if the whole world is suddenly open and explained and makes sense is gone, and you were left with the cold rush of assignments going past their due dates.

So the next semester you wound up on Academic Probation because your GPA dropped below a 2.0, and was told that your financial aid was to be cut, if you could not up your cumulative GPA to a certain point within a semester.

So now you’re stressed and you have to talk to an academic advisor, to get the hold on your registration cleared.

You’re not looking forward to next semester, and consider just taking one off to clear your head.

This is a bad idea.

This sort of attitude will be the death of your academic life.

You’ve been psyching yourself out over the reality check that’s just been handed to you.

Instead of using that, to stress yourself out, you need to make that terror work for you.

Here’s how:

You remember last semester how many times you chose to take a nap instead of working on your math homework? You can rest when your homework is done. You can look over it, when you wake up.

You remember when you went to work for 6-10 glorious stress-free, unthinking hours in the middle of your studying for finals, even though you desperately needed the time for homework and studying? Not going to do that anymore, you can get a loan if necessary for school. But first talk to your boss about cutting down your hours. Most likely your boss will be glad of you asking to cut your hours, because they were going to cut them anyways now that the holiday rush is gone, and now you actually get a choice when you’re not going to work.

You remember all of those looming due dates that were just making you stress out more, while you were behind last semester? Well guess what? This semester due to your dedication to eventually graduating and not becoming a college drop-out, you’re not going to get behind in those first easy weeks back to school. You’re going to do all of the assignments possible, and maybe start on the bigger projects/essays in those easy weeks. You’re going to get those daily math problem sets done, within a day of them being assigned, not a day within them being due.

Take it from someone who knows, failure is not an option.

Even though last semester you believe you hit your limit, it’s a good thing. Now you know exactly how much you can take, while you’re procrastinating, this semester with that limit in mind, and probably an easier courseload and repeat courses, you’re going to try a semester without procrastinating. We’ll learn your true limit, and I guarantee after that monster semester, this one is going to feel like cake.

I’m not asking you to deny your spontaneous, free-spirit nature, rather I want to teach you guys how to utilize it.

The next post is going to give you step-by-step instructions on how to do just that.